


They Are The Night

by imdisappointingmyparents



Series: Children of Snowfall, Children of Blood [1]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Dehydration, Delirium, Descriptions of wounds, F/F, F/M, Frostbite, Gen, General suffering, Hypothermia, I'm so sorry, Inversion of the Best Ending, Multi, Pretentious Writing Style, Role Reversal, Sound-Based Horror, Starvation, Transformation, Wendigo, Wendikids AU, infections, spirit possession, this is awful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:57:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imdisappointingmyparents/pseuds/imdisappointingmyparents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Every now and again Sam would catch sight of her friends’ eyes glittering in the dark, with despair and fear and bewilderment and sometimes (far too often for comfort) with a wretched kind of hunger. They all knew of the curse by now, but that certainly didn’t mean anybody’s stomach got the message."</p><p>Josh avoided his fate and made it off the mountain, still alive and human. Everyone else isn't so lucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Are The Night

**Author's Note:**

> This work has not been beta read.

**Excerpt from Joshua Washington interview: 02/03/2015 08:47 MST**

**Interviewer [NAME AND RANK REDACTED]:** _Do you remember anything from between the time you were taken to the mines and the time your friends found you?_

 **Joshua Washington:** _No. Not really._

 **I:** _Is it possible one of your friends took you down there? Trying to get back at you?_

 **JW:** _No, I mean, the thing that grabbed me, I saw it later, and it—it wasn’t human._

 **I:** _An animal?_

 **JW:** _No._

 **I:** _Then what was it, Josh?_

 **JW:** _I don’t know, okay? It was—it was tall, and angry, and it came out of the water and it grabbed Mike and I…I just…I couldn’t move. I froze up. Sam tried to save him—I don’t think she was thinking, it was just instinct, you know? But it was too strong._

 **I:** _And you’re sure you didn’t imagine it?_

 **JW:** _I…I mean…it was real, I’m sure it was, it just…it wasn’t like when I see things. It was so, so real. I’ve never been so scared, I just…_

 **I:** _So when the lodge exploded, that was you? Trying to stop this…thing?_

 **JW:** _Yeah, I mean, I had to, right? It would’ve taken me._

 **I:** _Taken you?_

 **JW:** _Like Mike and Sam. Probably the others too; I didn’t see…I was kind of running blind out of there, you know? But it, it took them down in the mines somewhere and…and…oh, God, they could be dead…I didn’t want them to die…_

 **I:** _Sir—_

 **JW:** _You have to help my friends! Please! They’re still down there. They might still be alive!_

 **I:** _We’ll see if the rescue parties turn anything up._

 **JW:** _Please, please go down to the mines, please…they can’t be dead…it’s all my fault…_

\------------

She’d watched the daylight ebb and flow through the cracks and shafts in the rock that led to the surface enough times to tell herself with something akin to certainty that Hannah wasn’t coming back. Maybe Josh had somehow managed to trap or kill her— _her best friend is dead all over again and she still couldn’t save her_ —or maybe she’d just gotten bored of her friends-turned-prey and had moved on to greener pastures. It didn’t matter much now, anyway. Sam had thought that maybe whatever Hannah had done to immobilize them would wear off eventually and they could flee above ground, but so far the best any of them could manage was a few feet before their stricken bodies gave out.

Trapped in a gore-caked mine with the headless body of a pyromaniac and six of her closest pals. What a holiday.

The old man’s body had yet to rot away; the cold kept it almost perfectly preserved, as if they really were in an honest-to-God meat locker. Every now and again Sam would catch sight of her friends’ eyes glittering in the dark, with despair and fear and bewilderment and sometimes (far too often for comfort) with a wretched kind of hunger. They all knew of the curse by now but that certainly didn’t mean anybody’s stomach got the message.

Nobody talked much. Nobody knew what to say.

Sam leaned back against the wall of the cavern and let her mind wander. Beth was down here somewhere. Her childhood friend, confidant, first real girlfriend, partner in ridiculous outdoor escapades was lying in pieces, alone and defiled. It was all Sam’s fault. That stupid breakup they’d had last year that had kept her from following Beth into the storm, and had ultimately cost her the two most important people in her life.

This was a fitting fate for them, Sam supposed. Left to either die to turn into the very thing they’d unwittingly and indirectly turned Hannah into. There was some comfort in the fact that they still had a choice—even one between two terrible options. Better painful, pointless, meaningless choices than none at all.

She thought about Hannah, whose beloved tattoo was somehow still visible on her mutated arm. Hannah, who had first found her crying on the edge of the playground after the other kids had called her a freak for trying to save a spider from their stomping feet. Throughout their childhoods she’d never laughed at her or called her weird but instead played with her for hours almost every day they had the chance. Her very best friend had gone through hell all alone and had come out as something almost unrecognizable. Had the monster been anyone else, maybe Sam would still have enough fight in her to try and find a way to save everyone. But that horrible truth had undone her. She hated the misery that had washed over her, the unshakable desire to just quit and be done with everything, but try as she might she could not resurrect the courage that had burned within her all her life.

The sound of shuffling pulled her out of her reverie. Jessica, tattered, half-dead and famished, was dragging herself over to the body on the hook. She’d lost so much blood over the past few days that her skin had gone grey, except where the wounds on her face and chest had begun to swell and fester. The rabid desperation on her ruined face made her intentions transparent.

“Jess—” Mike started, then coughed, his voice hoarse from lack of use. He opened his mouth to speak again but Jess silenced him with a look.

She had to. She was too weak. She didn’t want to die, none of them did. It only made sense.

Sam could only watch, unconsciously mirroring the horrified expressions of the others, as Jessica slowly brought herself to a shaky standing position and pulled—with obvious difficulty—the corpse from its hook before bending back down to eat.

\------------

 

After Jess, the others began to follow suit with terrifying quickness. It was like a massively infectious virus had escaped captivity. The overpowering desire to live was rampant and unstoppable, and the rest of Sam’s friends fell like dominoes within a matter of days. She could have stopped them. She could’ve at least tried. But what difference would warning words and a stern look make anyway? They’d all probably give in eventually, or die a miserable death. She didn’t want her friends to suffer, never did, always tried to keep them safe and happy, and now she could either try to make her friends die with her or let them turn themselves into monsters.

 

_“And, like, they give you a pick between Test A and Test B, but they’re literally the same test with the questions mixed up,” Hannah told Sam and Josh, “So, like, why give people the choice at all, y’know?”_

_“So nobody worries that they’re no longer living in a democratic nation,” Josh replied._

 

Mike of all people was next, drunk on what few shreds of heroism he still clung to, probably aiming, Sam figured, to join his girlfriend. Jess, of course, had she been lucid enough to tell him so, would’ve begged him to let her go, to try to make it even if that meant abandoning her, but he was too awash with grief and an ill-advised thirst for atonement to care. None of them could ever stop Mike wen he had his mind set on something. It was infuriating. A real hero, that one, complete with a noble sacrifice. Roll credits.

She hated him sometimes.

The following night as Sam lay on her back, trying in vain to sleep, she heard the sound of sobbing in between the unmistakable sounds of teeth tearing flesh. There were more sounds of shuffling, and then Chris’ ragged voice telling a sniffling, condemned Ashley a thousand times over that it wasn’t her fault, she’s not a monster, everything will be alright.

Sam almost laughed at that last one.

She stopped looking at her friends after that. She curled up in her corner and spent all the time she could manage asleep, trying to ignore the burning in her stomach, the roaring panic in her brain. She was going to die.

 

_“We all die someday, Sam,” Beth joked while the two wandered, lost, in a notoriously bear-filled forest, “Why not make our ends worthy of a hiking safety PSA?”_

 

On the nights she couldn’t sleep she listened to Emily’s mumblings. An infection blighting a huge, gaping cut on Emily’s leg, in tandem with the cold and dehydration, had left her completely delirious more often than not. In her moments of clarity, she was quiet and withdrawn, but when the fever dragged her back into confusion she muttered to herself about the supposed rescue crew she’d contacted, and how search parties would find them any day now. The sick girl’s tireless mantra of  _help is coming, it’s coming, I called them, just wait, just hold on,_ was almost believable when Sam was sleep-deprived enough. Maybe that tiny scrap of harebrained hope was what was keeping Emily alive in spite of the illness whittling her away even more than the hunger was.

Matt had been eerily quiet. A part of her worried that he was dead, but she told herself that, even as far gone as she was, Emily, at least, would have come out of her feverish state long enough to notice, to mourn him.

Right?

A wave of relief came over her when she finally heard his voice. Followed almost immediately by a pang of horror.

“Hey, Em?”

“…Matt? Are they here…? They said they’d come get us…”

“Em...I don't think they're gonna find us."

"No. No. No...I called them...they're coming...they are."

"I'm sorry. It's just...Oh, God, Em, you're burning up."

"They're gonna find us...I c-called them..."

“I'm so sorry. This is the only thing I can think of. Maybe you won't be sick anymore if you...oh, fuck...I can't fucking believe this. This isn't fair...!"

“I’m cold, Matt.”

"I know, I know. I’m sorry...I need you to eat. Can you do that for me?”

“Where'd you g-get...Did you find a...a rat, or something...?”

“I...yeah. Yeah, it's a rat. H-here. I’ll have some too, so you’re not, you know, alone.”

“Alone…?”

“Yeah, I guess I just don’t want to make you do this by yourself.”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“You won’t be, Em. I promise…I’m really sorry.”

Sam’s pleas caught in her throat and lodged there. She desperately buried herself in her thoughts, fantasized about her first bath with Beth in the lodge, just them and the water.

Hours later, after Emily had evidently drifted off, Matt’s voice, more resigned and sorrowful than Sam had ever heard it before, echoed through the cavern.

"I know what you guys are thinking. I don’t care. I had to. She's sick. She was gonna die. I had to save her. It was the only way. I couldn’t lose her again. Not again.”

Chris gave in not too long after that. It was so quick and so quiet, just the familiar sound of a body dragging itself across the cave floor, a mumbled “sorry, Sam” and the mercifully brief sounds of eating. It didn’t sound like he ate much at all. He wasn’t letting his needs take over. He’d just lost hope.

It was just her now. The Final Girl. Was it Josh who had called her that? Probably. Sounded like him. A world away the two of them had been laughing and jostling one another in the basement, trying to get the stupid, clanking boiler to work. He’d held up his hand for a high-five and Sam had somehow managed to miss, prompting Josh to laugh at her for a good two minutes. Where was he? Did he make it out? How long had they been down there? Why hadn’t anyone thought to keep track?

Sam felt the last of her strength seeping out through her pores. Her stomach felt as though it had eaten itself, and there was nothing left of her but a failing body and a wandering mind. Her hands were shaking. There were spots in her vision. She could no longer feel her feet. In her imagination, death was an eraser, slowly rubbing away everything that made her real. Starting at her toes and going up her legs and stomach and chest and head until she was nothing but eraser dust and a faint, grey outline on a blank white page.

Before Chris had eaten, Sam had heard the changes in her friends—the gradual warping of Ash’s voice, the scraping of Jess’ claws against the cave floor—but had mostly been able to tune them out. Now it was all she ever heard. In spite of her attempts to hide in her mind she seemed to be unable to do anything else but tune into the “All My Friends Are Turning into Cannibalistic Abominations” radio hour. She listened because her conscience would not let her ignore what she’d let happen (again) anymore. Her friends' bones creaked as they lengthened and changed. Their human teeth clattered against the cavern floor as they fell out, replaced, Sam knew, by the knife-like incisors she’d seen in Hannah’s mouth as she’d screeched. Sam had expected them to scream, but their sounds of anguish were disturbingly quiet. Whatever pain and agony the transformation brought was swallowed up almost completely by despair and acceptance.

When her friends’ whimpers, groans and sobs mutated into snarls Sam knew that the circumstances of her impending choice had changed. Death was suddenly no longer a slow and creeping thing but an immediate threat. She imagined her friends pouncing upon her and ripping her to shreds like a pack of hyenas. She imagined their faces, hideous parodies of their former selves, as whatever remorse remained was swallowed up by insatiable hunger.

It was too much, too horrible. She couldn’t die like that. Besides, she’d let them eat. Once again she’d stood by and done nothing and the people she loved had paid the price. It was a price they shouldn’t have to pay alone.

( _“I know being vegan is frustrating sometimes but going straight to Donner Party mode seems a bit extreme to me,”_ Josh would’ve joked,  _“There’s got to be, like, at least eight steps in between.”_ )

She thought about her mother and father as she ate and listened to the sounds of transformation all around her. Her father was an unapologetic carnivore who never hesitated to tell Sam that she didn’t know what she was missing but still went on special missions to Whole Foods to pick up vegan-friendly ingredients for her, even if he brought back the wrong stuff most of the time. Her perpetually worrying, I-just-want-to-make-sure-you’re-getting-enough-protein mother would fuss over her diet and her dad would just laugh and say  _relax Candice, if there’s anyone in this family who knows how to take care of herself, it’s Sammy._

Her parents would never know what happened to her.

Once she’d finished, she could practically feel the nigh-irresistible predatory instincts that her friends had grappled with whenever they sensed her presence die away. It was as if they knew she was marked, that her flesh was now as contaminated as theirs was.

Or maybe they were just welcoming her into the fold.

 

_They’re an odd group, a bit off kilter, but they definitely seem like the type of friends who stick together through thick and thin”, read the entry in the diary the new girl, Ashley, had carelessly left open on the library table. “I’d do anything for friends like that.”_

\------------

 **NOTICE:** _Due to the disappearance of Recovery Team B and the following disappearance of the supplementary party sent after them in the wake of said disappearance, all remaining search and rescue parties are to withdraw from the site of interest effective immediately. All search and rescue activities are henceforth postponed until further notice._

_\------------_

They were the strangest creatures, the ones that came to this mountain. Young and wide-eyed and ogling at every tree and rock as if the mountain were sacred and rich with meaning. They talked excitedly amongst themselves and made truly terrible attempts to protect themselves from the threats that they must have known about. Enough of them have come now and fallen into hunters’ jaws that the newcomers must have known of their dismal odds for survival, and yet they came in droves. Not that she was complaining—there was enough game about to last every hunter on the mountain countless winters—but something about their youthful recklessness, their foolhardy curiosity, their deep-seated belief in their own immortality, gave her pause.

On the colder days, when she and her cohorts piled together for the scant additional warmth their bodies provided, she would consider the creatures she slaughtered almost regularly now and the memories their presence dredged up.

She didn’t remember much, not really. She knew that she hadn’t lived her whole life on the mountain, but beyond that her memories were too murky to sift out anything useful. The things she did recall frightened her in ways she didn’t understand. Memory was a fickle, often painful thing, and so she rarely gave herself time for it. There really wasn’t much time for such things anyway.

Her prey wasn’t going to catch itself, now was it?

The following morning, just before sunrise, when the hunt was almost over for the night, she and two of the others—one covered in strange scars, the other with two fingers missing from one of his hands—killed a buck and dragged its corpse back to the place where the rest of the pack slept. One, a smaller beast with an irritable disposition, shook herself out of her semiconscious state and chirped. Her companion stirred at the sound of her call and bounded over to the carcass, ripping off an entire leg before bringing it back for the two of them to share. The other two came to shortly thereafter, moving in tandem and huddling together over the meat like they couldn’t bear to be parted. The buck’s three killers moved in last, taking their fill. It was a nice arrangement the group had. Certainly more rewarding than the solitary endeavors of the other hunters on the mountain. They did not fight or compete but instead shared everything, roamed together, slept together. The alliance calmed her on a deep level that she did not completely comprehend. It was a harmony that she felt the pack, whoever they used to be, had not been able to achieve in a long time. But that was another life ago.

Everything was all right now. Life was simple. There was nothing but the mountain, the hunt, and the pack. A little part of her grieved for the unknown time before, but it was small enough to suppress on all but the coldest and most restless days.

The sun broke over the horizon and bled lilac and gold across the sky. Dawn had come.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I've had this idea for a while now, but writing it has been something of a pain. I hope it is at least somewhat satisfactory.  
> I'm pretty sure wendigo are normally solitary hunters but I stuck the Dawn Squad in a pack for the sake of a not-entirely-bleak ending.  
> Feedback is always appreciated. Thanks for your interest!  
> EDIT: It should be noted that a lot of the ideas for this story came from the tumblr blog whatsinthemines, which is, incidentally, a fantastic place to go for all your Until Dawn needs.


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